A Conversation With a Scammer

[oatnet]

I got a call today, from a guy with an Indian accent so thick that I could barely understand him.

He said he was from Microsoft, and that they were getting messages from my computer saying it was infected. Obvious scam, but I decided to play along and see where it led to; plus it gave me chances to frustrate the scammer by playing dumb and misinterpreting things.

"What do you use this computer for?" he asked.
"Financial Data" I lied. This news excited him, his voice went up about an octave, and he started talking faster.
"OK Sir Let me ask you to do one thing..." He prefaced every step of his instructions with that "one thing" phrase.

First he asked me if I saw the Windows flag (!) in the bottom left corner of my computer. Then he carefully spelled out "evenDvwr"-- "E like Edverd..." I knew he was looking for evenTvwr, so I asked him to spell it again, and read 'evenDvwr' back to him, and he definintely was asking for 'evenDvwr' not 'evenTvwr.' I wasn't going to educate him, but I typed in eventvwr instead to move things along.

Once there, he directed me into the Application logs, and asked me if I saw any errors. There weren't any on the first page, I told him so, and he asked me to scroll down. I told him I saw a few errors, he had me keep scrolling down.

"Do you see more than 10 errors?" He asked,
"Yes," I replied.
"That is because your computer is infected with a virus, which is why it is sending us messages."
"Oh my!' I replied, blithly.
"What?", he said, baffled by colloquial english.
"Gernetz Frishhle." I said, in perfect gibberish.
"What?" he said frantically.
"Aslbleeb vernish?" in gibberish, with a steelworker accent.
"Hello?"
"OK" I said. It took him a few moments to get the conversation back on track.

"How do you connect to the internet?"
"Internet? What is that?" I said, playing really dumb. We went back and forth on this a few times until he tried a new tack:
"How do you send mail?"
"I put a stamp on it and drop it in the mailbox."
"Sir, can I ask you to do one thing, please hold on?"

He went away for a few minutes, and a new guy, claiming the title of supervisor, came on the line. He spoke better english, but had the same "Let me ask you to do one thing" tic. He went through most of the same script. "windows Flag" and all. When we got through the event viewer part, he said, "Those errors meant that your PC could be crashed on (sic) at any moment, it is very dangerous."

He asked me to open the "run" box again, and asked me to type in AMMYY(dot)com - a well-documented scamSite. I played dumb while pretending to try to access AMMYY, and strung it out as long as I could, managing to get the call timer past 15 minutes. Finally, I was bored enough to give him the bad news.

"I forgot to tell you, but I have been a computer professional for 28 years."
"Oh..?"
"I knew this was the scam from the moment I answered the phone. I have been just playing along, trying to waste as much of your time as I possibly can."
"{long stream of Angry Gibberish} What are you doing? {More Angry Gibberish}"
"You are a Thief, and a Liar, and a Scammer, so I am trying to waste as much of your time as I can," I said.
"{Angry Gibberish}This is no joke, this is serious business {More Angry Gibberish}"

I laughed into the phone, long hard and spitefully. I thought that would make him hang up, but he was still there when I ran out of breath, probably gearing up a reply - so I hung up the phone, and let him stew on it.

I wish I had thought to record it. :lol:

 

[SamTexas]

Well spent time!

I wish there is some legal thing we can do to not just discourage these guys but to actually hurt them financially or to put them behind bars, even just momentarily.

 

[salty9]

I used to work with a guy that detested scamming and he felt that is was his duty to waste as much of their time as possible. It was kind of cruel like a cat playing with a mouse because these scammers basically are paid on a piece-work basis. Entertaining to hear tho.

 

[StudEbiker]

Awesome. 8)

 

[amberwolf]

need a voice recogniiton progarm that responds like a person doing what the scammer tells them so it cna string htem along for longer.

 

[SamTexas]

It was kind of cruel like a cat playing with a mouse because these scammers basically are paid on a piece-work basis.

Huh? Why is it cruel?

 

[Philistine]

The scam you are talking about is at plague proportions in Australia. Apparently most of those callers are all working for one guy out of Mumbai who makes a fortune out of the scam. I have a silent number and I am on the Do Not Call Register, so I don't even understand where they got my details from (they ask for you by name when they call you, so it isn't just a blind call), and we were getting the calls every second day at least, it was driving me nuts. After I started blowing a whistle at full blast into the phone the calls stopped. Here is my experience with these a$$holes:

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=30582&hilit=+scam

 

[DAND214]

I didn't play it as well as you did.

Today a poor english speaking person called and said that my wife said I was having problems with My computer.

I said no I am not, he says you are saying my wife is a liar? I said yes she is! back hecomes and says so you say she is a liar then so are you he said. He was upset that I called him a liar also.

then I told him I don't have any problems with my computer since i build them myself. and hung up.

i am also on the do not call list, but they still call.

it was a short time with a good laugh to go with it.

dan

 

[dogman dan]

Well Oatnet, you sure are on one frockheads do not call list now. Well done, great example of how to get on the real do not call lists.

 

[salty9]

Iyogi is a scammer and they are also used as tech support for both Avast and Norton. I learned this the hard way.

One way to lessen your chances of hearing from scammers is to switch from MS. I've been using Linux for a couple of years and have had no problems yet. There is really no reason for an experienced DIYer not to maintain his computer.

 

[Icewrench]

If I am having a bad day and a phone solicitor calls I share something loud with them.
Play a small tune with the buttons on the phone if nothing else is available or if I am at work they will get a blast of noise from an air tool maybe even a blast of a car horn.
I have made their do not call him list.

 

[MattyCiii]

"Do Not Call" lists have no teeth in today's world. It's so easy to use VoIP from overseas and break all telecom laws with no consequence. I believe they are using robo-dialers (also prohibited IIRC) dialing random numbers with no DO NOT CALL screening at all.

I got a similar call at work a couple weeks ago. Machine voice: "Press 1 to erase all your credit card debt!" - that's the screen, to filter out answering machines, FAXes, dead-end lines and smart people. I was at work - work next to the Info Security guy... Me: "Hey Chuck, you gotta hear this!". The machine voice looped, and I took a chance and pressed "1".

So a heavily indian accented man came on the line. "Did you press 1 to erase all your debt?" I strung him along a bit - when he asked my name I said "You know that already, it's in your system. Check the outgoing call log and tell me what number you reached me at." I parried with him on his BS responses, and just when I started to have a little fun he got smart and hung up.

There's no way to prevent these calls (I like the idea of making music or using a police whistle/air horn/etc.) The only way I feel you can manage them is to take the call, be smart, and F with them Oatnet style!

 

[Dauntless]

Iyogi is a scammer and they are also used as tech support for both Avast and Norton. I learned this the hard way.

Oh, the AT&T technical support for the DSL asked for my credit card number, etc. It was a quite indian sounding man. I think this happened with Norton when I was trying to GET RID of the install that comes on the new computer. I don't regard any offshore technical support as reputable.

 

[oatnet]

Glad you guys enjoyed it.

The scam you are talking about is at plague proportions in Australia. Apparently most of those callers are all working for one guy out of Mumbai who makes a fortune out of the scam. I have a silent number and I am on the Do Not Call Register, so I don't even understand where they got my details from (they ask for you by name when they call you, so it isn't just a blind call), and we were getting the calls every second day at least, it was driving me nuts. After I started blowing a whistle at full blast into the phone the calls stopped. Here is my experience with these a$$holes:

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=30582&hilit=+scam

Phil, That was a riot. :lol: I used to take a similar "yer mom" approach with the Nigerian emailer's running the "we need someone to deposit overseas millions so give us your bank info" scam. After stringing them along, setting up IRL meetings that I wouldn't show up to, I'd write them: "You have embarasssed your entire family with this obvious scam. Your mom wants to tell you how ashamed she is that you grew up to be a thief, but I won't let her take my dick out of her mouth. ". Ohh, did that light them up.

 

[alex12342011]

I remember once while posting an advert for craigslist to sell a set of rims, I got a reply a lady claiming to be from a orphanage wanted to buy them to give to the orphans. Now why are orphans all of a sudden in need of lightweight 19" alloy wheels for? She was ready to send a postal truck and everything to pick them up...

There are a whole bunch of people called "scam-baiters" whose mission is to waste as much of the scammers time and money as they can to teach these people a lesson.

This is one such result of scam-baiting a scammer from Nigeria :lol:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6618237/nigerian-scammer-tricked-into-making-commercial-for-anus-laptops

 

[Philistine]

I remember once while posting an advert for craigslist to sell a set of rims, I got a reply a lady claiming to be from a orphanage wanted to buy them to give to the orphans. Now why are orphans all of a sudden in need of lightweight 19" alloy wheels for? She was ready to send a postal truck and everything to pick them up...

There are a whole bunch of people called "scam-baiters" whose mission is to waste as much of the scammers time and money as they can to teach these people a lesson.

This is one such result of scam-baiting a scammer from Nigeria
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/66182 ... us-laptops

I can't remember the URL for it, but have you seen the other guy who baits Nigerian scammers with the Fall Guy bit? He is hilarious, he does this one where he responds to Nigerian email scammers who email him, and convinces them that he is a LA movie producer, looking for stunt men in an upcoming movie, and all they have to do to audition is send him a video of them jumping off a at least one storey high roof with no crash mat, saying to the camera before they jump "I am the unknown stunt man, that made Eastwood such a star" (Ala "Fall Guy"/Colt Severs), of course they take massive painful falls, then he posts all the videos up on his website, it is hilarious....

 

[gestalt]

Not a scammer per se, but if you hate spam calls then Tom Mabe is going to be right up your alley. Here is my favorite, "the angel of death"
[youtube]oLnQXmkR3dI[/youtube]

 

[NeilP]

Would these people actually attempt to connect to your computer over the internet? by giving you instructions, openign ports etc to allow them access to your computer?

Would be nice to build a bait computer, (or even run a VM machine ) and allow them access to that. While you were monitoring what they were sednign/doing at all times..but I guess that if they are intelligent to attempt to attack your computer like that,they are liable to be on the look out to prevent people gaining access to their machines. Strign them along, while thy connect to your machine..whiel you get in to theirs by some other back door attack..then tell them at the last minute as you do something fatal to their machine

 

[oatnet]

Would these people actually attempt to connect to your computer over the internet? by giving you instructions, openign ports etc to allow them access to your computer?

No need for that much complexity, they just direct you to an infected website, and the virus does the rest, from dumping Trojans on your puter to steal data, to installing a pop-up program that pretends to be a virus until you "fix" by buying their "antivirus" software.

A slick part of the scam is that they gain confidence by having the victim start event-viewer from the Start/Run box, and then have the victim put the website address in the same Start/Run box, so they may not realize they are going to the Internet instead of running something local.

Phil, I like the stunt man idea, I'll search for some vids. I pondered it for myself, but I don't have the heart to make anyone hurt themselves, even scammers. Kinda suprised to find that out.

 

[borschelrh]

Very funny! We don't get them here in Hungary as all call regardless of source are charged at a basic rate which is expensive. I think I use my home line maybe twice a month and my mobile even less. We even get roaming fees inside Hungary if we go East as far as Budapest.

I used to get these back in the day in the US. I had a clever device I could hold up to the phone and it screeched so loud it blows your ears out. The really dumb ones you can call back and screw with them using call back. But, now they are mostly being done from India using VOIP so it is impossible. I also have used the gobbledygook gook speech effectively as well. It works on my 87 years old mother too. Shuts her right up when she gets annoying. Too bad it doesn't work (actually it works but in the wrong way) with my wife who is Russian and sometimes has trouble with my California accent (not Brit , Russians when they speak English have a British English accent so have trouble with American English even a vanilla accent like mine). It is funny for a few minutes but is expensive in the long run. I like to live dangerously. If you remember Rocky and Bullwinkle they had Boris and Natascha characters. My wife's accent is even worse than that. Her English is grammatically perfect just heavily accented. My children never get even a tiny bit of it when they visit us so I have to translate. I once played an episode of Boris/Natascha for her and she didn't find that too funny. Kind of like she used to tell me she didn't snore so I videotaped it. I got to sleep in the bedroom again after only a few weeks. Just kidding but I still hear about it 5 years later.

My favorite were the calls from the police (whatever society and there seem to be hundreds of them) asking for donations. The charitable solicitations (yeah right!) are not blocked by the do not call lists either. I also heard most call centers in the US are manned by prisoners in Federal Prisons so are a form of slave labor. Anyway, I always stopped it short by saying I just got released from prison after serving 20 years for killing a cop. That ended those calls very quickly.

 

[borschelrh]

There used to be a web site for revenge stuff. I can't find the one I used to use but here is a similar site: http://www.spymall.com/catalog/revenge.htm I bought a lot of this stuff and it was all worth every penny. I had one device I put on the phone of my boss (we had those big military phone cable connection things with hold buttons etc.) and it would randomly screw stuff up. No voice, or would go silent, or wouldn't ring, or lights blinking and no one there that kind of stuff. It drove her insane. Then I bought a small thing that had a 9 volt battery. It had a timer and would randomly maybe once an hour or twice a day, screech out a loud high pitched "cheep" here is a version of it: http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20070130/revenge-in-the-form-of-the-annoy-a-tron/. I hid it in her suspension ceiling above her desk. I also loaded on her boot screen a small program that boots into dos randomly and ran a script now reformatting your hard drive and it would count up from 1% and then would go blank at 99%. That was hilarious. The IT guys who work for the government are mostly idiots so it took them a year to figure it out. I also injected a small amount of cadaverine into her car with a needle and syringe through the rubber seal. We use cadaverine as a standard for gas chromatography and the smell is that of dead people literally. It is impossible to eliminate completely once it contaminates plastics. It sounds a bit over the top but you have no idea how evil this colonel was. She was the most hated person in the military and completely untouchable being a female, medical doctor, and full blooded native american. We had a pool going on how long she would live after she tried to fire her own secretary (Black) whose son was a major gangbanger in DC. This was the same year the secretary was awarded employee of the Medical Center for the Year. Bitch doesn't begin to describe this woman. She even had her eyeliner tattooed on. A true character and rotten to the core.

 

[Philistine]

That Annoyatron is pure gold, I will be wheeling one of those out at some point I am sure.

I also injected a small amount of cadaverine into her car with a needle and syringe through the rubber seal. We use cadaverine as a standard for gas chromatography and the smell is that of dead people literally.

I knew a guy once who hid raw prawns in the curtain dowlings in his bosses office, apparently it took the boss weeks to find them.

 

[borschelrh]

I am almost (but not quite) ashamed what I did way back in the day to my Sergeant Major. I was the NCOIC of the graveyard shit at a major Army Medical Center back when I was an SFC. We got this turd of a SGM who for some reason declared war on the night shift and would do silly stuff like call us back in the mid-day (when we are sleeping) to have uniform inspections or some other non-sense. Once he called us all back in to find out who spit in the drinking fountain. Seriously!! We had to stand at attention in formation for a couple of hours as none of us had a clue. Naturally, the next night we poured every possible sputum sample into the drinking fountain until it was over-flowing. We were a very busy medical center and this was in the late 70's. Also, this particular fountain was just outside his office. So, as I was in charge at night and had a master key to everything I also had access to his office. One of the more unpleasant laboratory tests we perform are 72 hour fecal fat concentrations. Basically, the patient poops in a sterile empty 1 gallon pain can for 3 days. Now these particular patients also have especially stinky poops as they can't digest fats at all. Anyway, when doing this test we put the samples mixed with sterile saline on a paint shaker for 10 minutes to emulsify the sample then we take a small amount out and measure the total fat concentration. The remainder is frozen for 90 days.If you recall way back when you had to do urinalysis you peed into a little paper cup and then transferred that to a bottle so we had a bunch of these little paper cups. My shift worked the 4/40 shift from 2200 until 0800 Friday through Monday. Every Friday at precisely 2300 (during commercial breaks for Saturday Night Live,I would thaw out one sample of poop and put it into a paper cup. I then put the cup inside the black military wall clock and then locked the door. Every Monday morning I would remove the now thoroughly dried cup and dispose of it. I did this for 4 years. They called the engineers , jack-hammered the floors, tore out the walls but could never find that leaking sewage pipe. I wonder why not? I also subscribed hi to every stupid mail order catalogue and on-line education course available usually from those sleazy pages in the back of the Archie comic books.

 

[dermot]

http://baita.mugu.co.uk/

When I receive such a call, I put on my most formal voice and intone:

"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?"

If the answer is no, I say that I don't do business with godless hell-bound unbelievers. If yes, that I can't do business with them as all telemarketers are hell-bound schismatic heretics.

Or some variation thereof...

I've had great fun with two 419 email scammers: One had $50M of gold bullion - over the course of many emails and several weeks, I told him that my company used gold industrially, so we didn't need to import and sell it, I'd just buy it direct at a discount equal to my original cut of the proceeds. Then I asked for a small sample, say 1Kg, to check it for purity.... no reply...

Another one had a chest of diamonds - again, I said I would buy them to build a space-based laser to destroy infidels - once again, no reply after I asked for samples to test the optical purity....

Simple pleasures...

Dermot